Sunday, February 12, 2006

Tony Blankley, who works for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times alleged "news"-paper, pulled a Nasrallah on himself on this week's McLaughlin Group on PBS. (I must say, I give myself substantial credit just for sitting through The McLaughlin Group, given the nasty tone and demeanor its supposed moderator fosters.) The group discussed the NSA's illegal and unconstitutional domestic wiretapping program.

I have never heard a more ludicrous argument than to say that because the government has not yet released evidence of secret successes that therefore we should disband our capacity to protect ourselves, and let me tell you, every politician and every journalist and every commentator who makes this point that we're not in any danger, that we don't need our protections, will find themselves disproven by events at some point and that will be the end of their careers. — Tony Blankley of the Washington Times

First of all, as Eleanor Clift points out, that's not the argument! It's a classic "straw man." The actual argument is that although we are in considerable danger, that danger does not justify jettisoning our hard-fought liberty in the name of security, and most especially the external danger does not justify giving unchecked power to an administration that has so many times demonstrated its incompetence, arrogance, and corruption.

The Founding Fathers laid their lives on the line to establish our freedoms, and one of those that they named specifically was the freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into our personal communications. That the President and his lackeys argue that the threat from al Qaeda is so dire that we should abandon the Fourth Amendment is proof only of their disconnection from reality.

We can only hope that Tony Blankley's words will boomerang to knock him right off the national stage. He has repeatedly demonstrated, this week as vividly as ever, that he is nothing more than an apologist marching in lock step with his Bush Administration overlords. Events will at some point disprove his faith that Bush is capable of making America safer, at which point Blankley should go home and look for a job selling used cars.

Speaking of selling used cars, it's time for Degrassi. I could use a little respite from Blankley and Buchanan....